Mexican Drug Czar Fired, Charged With Drug Corruption

March-April 1997

Gen. Jose de Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, Mexico's highest ranking anti-drug
official, was fired and arrested on charges that he accepted bribes in exchange
for protecting a high-level Mexican drug trafficker ten weeks after he was
appointed. Gutierrez's arrest was announced on February 18 at an Army
Day celebration in Mexico City (John Ward Anderson, "Mexico Fires Anti-Drug
Czar in Bribe Probe," Washington Post, February 19, 1997,
p. A1; Julia Preston, "A General in Mexico's Drug War Is
Dismissed on Narcotics Charges," New York Times, February 19,
1997, p. A1; Andrew Downie, "Mexican drug fighter praised by U.S.
is arrested," Houston Chronicle, February 19, 1997, p. 14A;
Joseph B. Frazier, "Mexico's top drug fighter jailed in scandal,"
Chicago Sun-Times, February 20, 1997, s. 1, p. 20).

Mexico's Defense Secretary Gen. Enrique Cervantes Aguirre said Mexican
authorities began investigating Gutierrez on February 6 after they
received a tip that he had moved into an expensive apartment "whose
rent could not be paid for with the wage received by a public servant."
An investigation revealed that the apartment was made available to Gutierrez
by an employee of Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the alleged leader of Mexico's
Juarez drug cartel. Mexican authorities also obtained a recording of Gutierrez
and Carrillo Fuentes in which Gutierrez allegedly discussed payments to
be made to him in exchange for ignoring Carrillo Fuentes' illegal drug activities.
Gutierrez was taken into custody and charged with bribery, maladministration
of justice and facilitating the transportation of cocaine. "During
recent years, Gen. Gutierrez Rebollo deceived his superiors, defrauded
the confidence they placed him in, worked against Mexico's national security
and damaged the combined institutional forces against narcotics trafficking,"
said Cervantes. The general faces a court martial and may be tried for treason.

Gutierrez, 62, a 42-year army veteran, had been appointed in December
1996 as the director of the National Institute to Combat Drugs (INCD), the
Mexican equivalent of the U.S. DEA. Because of his long-standing reputation
for honesty and incorruptibility, he had been named by Mexican President
Ernesto Zedillo especially to combat corruption in Mexico's anti-drug law
enforcement.

U.S. OFFICIALS UNAWARE OF GUTIERREZ PROBE

U.S. officials were not aware of the investigation into Gutierrez's activities
and were not notified until it was made public on February 18 after
army troops raided three of Gutierrez' homes. During the two-week period
of the investigation, U.S. officials did not have contact with the drug
czar, believing he was sick. Gutierrez had been admitted to a hospital on
February 7 after being confronted about the drug allegations. Prior
to the scandal, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, director of the White House's
Office of National Drug Control Policy, called Gutierrez "an honest
man" and "a guy of absolute unquestioned integrity." Eric
Rubin, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said, "It's
one thing not to know he was corrupt, but it's another thing not to even
know that he's been [under investigation] for two weeks." One senior
U.S. law enforcement official said, "This points to a major intelligence
community failure." Mexico Foreign Minister Jose Angel Gurria said
Mexican officials did not want to tell the U.S. about the probe until substantial
evidenc was amassed, so as not to compromise their chief law enforcers if
their suspicions were unfounded (Stanley Meisler and Elizabeth Shogren,
"Mexico Told U.S. Nothing of Probe Into Drug Czar," Los Angeles
Times, February 22, 1997, p. A20).

CONFIDENTIAL ANTI-DRUG INTELLIGENCE
MAY HAVE BEEN COMPROMISED

U.S. officials began assessing whether confidential sources and methods
had been compromised by Gutierrez's corruption. Gutierrez had been briefed
on classified information during a December 3, 1996 meeting with U.S.
officials to discuss the militarization of the anti-drug effort and delivery
of U.S. military hardware to Mexico. He had access to Mexican intelligence
and intelligence provided to Mexico by the U.S., including anti-drug investigations,
wiretaps, interdiction programs and operations, and informant identities.
U.S. officials also began assessing the damage done by some of Gutierrez's
subordinates at the INCD who had criminal drug contacts. "The potential
for damage could be considerable," said a senior U.S. law enforcement
official (Pierre Thomas, "U.S. Assesses Damage Linked to Mexican Drug
Official," Washington Post, February 20, 1997, p. A30;
Julia Preston, "Mexico's Jailed Anti-Drug Chief Had Complete Briefings
in U.S.," New York Times, February 20, 1997, p. A1;
Mark Fineman, "Fallout From Mexican Drug Scandal Hits U.S.," Los
Angeles Times, February 21, 1997, p. A1; Gary Fields, "Scandal
throws scare into U.S. drug policy," USA Today, February 21,
1997, p. A9)

SCANDAL COMPLICATES U.S. CERTIFICATION
OF MEXICO IN ANTI- DRUG EFFORT

Gutierrez's arrest occurred two weeks before the Clinton Administration
was legally obligated to announce its annual certification of countries
cooperating with the U.S. in the anti-drug effort. While there was extensive
public discussion and congressional opposition to certification, the decision
to certify Mexico was widely predicted. The economic and trade sanctions
required by decertification would likely have had very adverse consequences
to both the Mexican and U.S. economies. Clinton's scheduled summit in Mexico
in April, his first as president, would have been diplomatically awkward,
if not impossible. The Administration stressed that Mexico's role as the
third-largest U.S. trading partner and NAFTA cosigner with the U.S. was
an important consideration in whether Mexico would be recertified (John F.
Harris, "General's Arrest to Figure in Review of Mexico Drug War,"
Washington Post, February 21, 1997, p. A13; Clinton Says
Mexico's Firmness Is Bright Side of Drug Scandal," New York Times,
February 21, 1997, p. A3; Dudley Althaus, "Mexico's scandals
don't deter U.S.," Houston Chronicle, February 23, 1997,
p. 1A; Pierre Thomas, "U.S. Mexico Trade May Outweigh Anti-Drug
Concerns," Washington Post, February 23, 1997, p. A10).

APPOINTMENT PART OF MILITARIZATION OF
MEXICAN ANTI-DRUG FORCES

Gutierrez's appointment to head the INCD was part of a strategy by President
Zedillo to fight extensive law enforcement corruption by expanding the role
of the military in anti-narcotics efforts in the last two years. However,
Gutierrez's firing "should be a caution to the civilian authorities
and the United States that pushing the military into the war on drugs is
not the easy ready solution they thought it was," said Eric Olson of
the Washington Office on Latin America in Washington, D.C. The Mexican military
"isn't any more resistant to [corruption] than any other institution
in society, particularly because of the amount of money involved,"
said Roderic Camp, a political scientist at Tulane University in New Orleans
(John Ward Anderson, "Scandal Exposes Mexican Military's Corruptibility,"
Washington Post, February 20, 1997, p. A25; Associated
Press, "Mexican government encounters setback in its fight against
drugs," Virginian-Pilot, February 20, 1997, p. A14;
Julia Preston, "Mexican Use of Army to Fight Drugs Worries U.S.,"
New York Times, February 22, 1997, p. A6).

On February 21, General Jose Luis Chavez Garcia announced that 87
federal police officers in Baja California Norte, a northwestern border
state, would be retrained and reassigned, and replaced with 46 military
agents. Mexican officials also announced that over the next 32 months,
about 3,000 soldiers will temporarily replace the civilian police force
in Mexico City, while the police officers attend ethics and other training
courses run by the army (Anne-Marie O'Connor, "Mexican Army Agents
to Replace Baja Police," Los Angeles Times, February 22,
1997, p. A1; John Ward Anderson, "Soldiers Replace Federal Police
in Drug-Wracked Mexican State," Washington Post, February 22,
1997, p. A1; Reuter, "Soldiers Replace Police," Washington
Post, March 1, 1997, p. A24).

Even before the scandal, U.S. officials complained about a lack of cooperation
by Mexican military officers with U.S. drug agents. Although perceived
to be less corrupt than the civilian law enforcement, the Mexican army
has repeatedly been accused of drug trafficking allegations, murders and
abductions. In one instance in 1991, two army generals and three other officers
were implicated in the murder of seven civilian anti-drug agents in Veracruz
after the agents discovered the soldiers unloading a plane load of cocaine.

SECOND MEXICAN GENERAL
CHARGED WITH DRUG CORRUPTION

Mexican Army Brigadier General Alfredo Navarro Lara, was arrested on
March 17 on charges that he offered a million dollars a month to Brigadier
General Jose Luis Chavez Garcia, Mexico's top anti-drug official in Tijuana,
to allow narcotics to pass through the region on their way to the U.S. General
Navarro Lara is accused of conveying a threat form the Arellano Felix brothers,
alleged heads of the Tijuana cartel, that if General Chavez Garcia refused
the bribe, they would kill him and his family (Julia Preston, "Another
Mexican General Is Arrested and Charged With Links to Drug Cartel,"
New York Times, March 18, 1997, p. A8; Mark Fineman, "Mexican
Army General Arrested on Drug Charges," Los Angeles Times (Washington
Edition), March 18, 1997, p. A3).

MEXICO APPOINTS NEW DRUG CZAR

On March 10, Mexico named a longtime lawyer and magistrate, Mariano
Herran Salvatti, 48, to replace Gutierrez as the head of the INCD. Attorney
General Jorge Madrazo said Herran had passed drug, character, and lie detector
tests, had his finances checked, and his family investigated before being
appointed. Herran, who has very little experience with drug cases, "will
do an efficient, loyal and honest job," Madrazo told reporters (Michael
Scott, "Mexico Picks Lawyer for Drugs Drive," Washington Post,
March 11, 1997, p. A16; Mary Beth Sheridan, "Mexico Names
Drug Czar After Vetting," Los Angeles Times (Washington Edition),
March 11, 1997, p. A3).